


all my time (and all my love)

by lucyprestons (leviosaphoenix)



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 04:36:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14324724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leviosaphoenix/pseuds/lucyprestons
Summary: Five times Wyatt touched Lucy and it was awkward, and the one time he did and it wasn’t.Post 2x03.





	all my time (and all my love)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back again! Admittedly a week late, because I wanted to post this before canon went in a different direction with 2x04, but the second half wasn't cooperating with me. Consider this canon-adjacent post 2x03. I'm not one for promos, synopses, promo pics, etc, so none of this is based on anything from upcoming episodes.
> 
> As always, thanks to courtselaina for being my sounding board/music wizard/beta extraordinaire.
> 
> Title and lyrics from Tortured Soul by Chord Overstreet.
> 
> Lucy x Wyatt Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/12159770374/playlist/6CRkpKIyxtDrcYiru8ZZzK

_Babydoll keeps me up at night_ __  
_I fell in love with your soft brown eyes_ __  
_I toss and turn most every night_ __  
_Insomnia is hard enough to fight_ __  
_Whiskey taste is on my breath_ __  
_Part of me is scared to death_ __  
_What if I told you the truth_  
_but I chase it down with ninety proof_

  
_**i.**_

When Wyatt Logan was seven years old, his older cousin Kyle convinced him that the tall ride at the county fair was slow and boring, just like a ferris wheel. The gradual climb was fine, and Wyatt craned his neck, leaning from his seat, looking out at the city spread below them.

Of course, The Fearfall wasn’t known for its calm descent.

The breath was sucked from Wyatt’s lungs as his mouth opened in a silent scream, his stomach catapulting into his throat, a deafening roar in his ears, and he was sure he was dying as the earth rushed up to meet him. He only became aware of Kyle’s mocking laughter when he felt the ground under his feet after the ride came to a stop.

It’s that feeling that he recognizes, the one of a solid foundation being torn away from beneath him, the sensation of Emma Whitmore out there somewhere laughing at him, when he sees the text message with two words and an address.

_Jessica’s alive._

He’s that unsuspecting seven-year-old falling to earth all over again.

He’s always hated falling.

* * *

He leaves without telling Lucy.

He tells himself it’s because he doesn’t know for sure it isn’t a trap, or because he knows she will insist on coming with him, and he doesn’t want to land her in hot water.

His reasoning is a lot more selfish than that.

In all honesty, he doesn’t want to see the brilliant smile slide off her face, when he was the reason for putting it there.

His lips are numb and his arms shake as he hails a taxi in the nearest town. The clamor in his head is making it hard to think clearly, but his mind swims with images of Lucy, of promising her that she still had him, of her hungry kisses in 1941, of her radiant and playful waking up the morning after. These are interspersed with flashes of his wedding to Jessica, of her standing in front of her closet in her underwear and smiling over her shoulder, of the empty casket at her funeral and her cosmetics strewn all over the bathroom counter weeks after she’d disappeared.

It can’t be possible. She’s been gone for years, he’s grieved her, it should be over.

But in a dingy bar, with a ring on her finger, it becomes clear that fate isn’t done toying with him just yet.

* * *

They’re separated.

This whole time, they’ve been married, lived together, thankfully never had any children.

He gathers from a long and painful conversation that his devotion to his service had caused a rift between them; his reluctance to talk about his PTSD had widened it. His refusal to tell her about his current assignment, even when he’d explained it was classified, had been another drop in an already heavy bucket.

She is suspicious of his questions, his eagerness to see her, but agrees to speak to him later in the week and scribbles down her number when he insists he’d lost his phone.

He returns to the bunker in a daze, and his team is waiting for him like a line of disapproving parents. It is the confusion and hurt in Lucy’s eyes that makes him feel the most ashamed.

“I thought it should go without saying, but apparently rule number one ‘don’t leave the bunker without telling anybody’ needs to be spelled out for you,” Rufus quips.

Wyatt looks at Agent Christopher. “I need to talk to you,” he says, his voice hoarse.

“About your wife?”

It’s not Denise that answers, but Lucy, who keeps her voice perfectly calm and controlled.

“Yeah,” Rufus says. “It was the first place Jiya thought you went. Imagine their surprise to learn about _our_ timeline, where Jessica has been dead for six years.”

“I,” Wyatt begins, but he chokes a little. “I don’t know how to deal with this.”

“I have your file,” Jiya offers, perhaps the most sympathetic of the firing squad he faces. “I can fill in any gaps that you have.”

He nods gratefully, even as Lucy stands and abruptly announces she’s going to bed.

“No, wait,” he says, but she doesn’t stop, and he looks helplessly toward Rufus.

“Don’t look at me, man. Not sure if there’s a right way to handle this, but not saying anything to Lucy was definitely the wrong one.”

* * *

He finds her in her room, lying on her bunk and staring at the ceiling.

“Not right now, Wyatt,” she sighs.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where I was going,” he tries, because it’s the only thing he knows for sure right now.

“Please, just…” she trails off, sitting up. “I knew going into this that you wanted to get her back, just like I want to get my sister back. What we had… well, what we had was nothing more than terrible timing, I guess.”

“Lucy,” he protests, reaching for her hand, a thrill of electricity still rushing through him at the touch of her skin as it always has. She looks at him for a moment, then pulls her hand away, cradling it in her lap with her shoulders hunched protectively.

“What I’m saying is that I won’t stand in your way. She’s your wife. Rufus and I are your team. None of this is your fault, and nothing has to change. You deserve this second chance.”

The conviction behind her words is what gets him, because of _course_ Lucy is too generous and too kind to interfere with something that could make him happy, even as it destroys her.

“I’ll be okay,” she whispers.

It feels wrong to leave her, but she is clearly done with the conversation, and he doesn’t have the energy to fight her on it.

He hears her quiet sobs before the door closes behind him, and they haunt his dreams that night.

* * *

_**ii.** _

It’s been almost a week.

A week of phone calls to his formerly dead wife; a week of Lucy studiously avoiding eye contact, or indeed, being in a room with him at all if not absolutely necessary.

Jessica warms to him a little more each time he reaches out. She tells him that she still wears her wedding ring on a chain around her neck, and the engagement ring on her finger to ward off drunk patrons at the bar. She tells him about her upcoming trip to Italy with her sister, one that he gathers they had once planned to take together, before the separation. She tells him about the pet rabbit she adopted after she moved out.

Hearing her voice after so long is disarming. He remembers how he hid away all of their home videos after she disappeared, unable to listen to her laugh at her dad’s wedding toast or sing an off-key rendition of a country song one more time without it driving him crazy.

He asks himself constantly what he’s doing, what he wants. Sometime ago, getting Jessica back had been all he could think about. He owes it to her to try.

The nagging voice at the back of his mind reminds him that he has been a sub-par husband for the years he doesn’t remember, but he forces it down.

When the call comes for their next jump, he feels the distance between himself and Lucy even more acutely. They have always been tactile, even more so since her weeks with her mother, and he misses the way he could fix her collar or help her up into the Lifeboat without a second thought.

It’s a habit, once they’re seated, for him to buckle her seatbelt for her. He reaches across to grab the strap, but her hand is already on it and she flinches away like she’s been burned.

“Sorry, I was just trying to help,” he murmurs.

“I’ve got it,” she says, stiffly, waiting to fix her own belt until she’s sure she won’t accidentally touch him again. It takes her a few tries, but her lip is firmly caught between her teeth in determination and Wyatt knows his offer of help is still unwelcome.

With her restraint finally secured, she nods to Rufus to start the jump, her eyes squeezing closed in anticipation.

Wyatt blames the nausea on the time travel.

He’s always been a terrible liar.

* * *

_**iii.** _

He tells Jessica that he wants to make things work.

He’d brought it up with Rufus first, and he would be lying if he said part of him wasn’t hoping his friend would try to talk him out of it.

Rufus, of course, had shrugged unhelpfully and changed the subject.

Jessica seems surprised at his change of heart but agrees to meet him for coffee. One coffee date turns into two, which turns into three, which turns into dinner.

In the spirit of honesty, he wonders aloud to Jiya if he should tell Jessica about Lucy, and she stares at him, alarmed.

“That is the _worst_ possible thing you could do if you want to fix your marriage,” she insists. “Jessica has met Lucy exactly once, and she hated her on sight. Knowing your husband is spending odd hours with a beautiful, intelligent woman doing God knows what isn’t exactly the most endearing circumstance. And how would you even begin to explain that she had been dead for years before it happened?”

It’s a fair point, but the idea of Jessica hating someone he considers a friend eats at him.

Jess’s face darkens a little when Agent Christopher’s call interrupts their dinner.

“You’re still not going to tell me what it is you’re doing when you leave for work at this hour?”

He pauses in the doorway and sighs. “You know I would tell you if I could. It’s-”

“Classified, I know,” she says, cutting him off. “But I’m your _wife_.”

Her words follow him all the way back to the bunker.

* * *

San Francisco in 1906 doesn’t seem like the safest destination.

They have no idea what Rittenhouse plans to do in the city, but they suspect that whatever it is will be covered up in the aftermath of one of the deadliest earthquakes in US history.

They make a plan to be back in the Lifeboat well in advance of the first foreshock, but of course, they should have known it would never be that easy.

Emma traps them in a room and flees, and Wyatt wishes he weren’t so adamant about wearing a watch on each jump, because the countdown to disaster is agonizing.

They take cover as much as they can, and he looks at the mere feet separating him and Lucy, wondering if he should say something, wishing she’d allow him to be beside her in this moment of life or death.

The ceiling caves in.

* * *

He emerges mostly unscathed from the debris; Rufus, too, crawls out coughing and gasping and cursing nineteenth century architecture.

Wyatt looks around for Lucy, calling her name. It’s his fault, of course, for driving a wedge between them. If he had been closer, if she had allowed him to hold her…

Her cries are almost lost in the sirens and commotion, but he hears her. With renewed strength, he pulls beams and bricks away until he uncovers her, pale and sweating. There is a piece of splintered wood embedded in her leg, and as she groans and tries to move, he quietly tells her to stay still and motions to Rufus for help.

Together they lift her, Wyatt bearing her weight while Rufus holds her leg steady. They agree wordlessly that taking her to a 1906 hospital would be a death sentence, so Wyatt bends down to look at the wound, resting his hands on the exposed skin of her thigh as she shudders.

“We need to get you back home,” he tells her, and her gaze meets his. “We’ll have to pull this out so we can travel.”

Rufus nods in agreement, and together they tear up their jackets and shirts. Lucy’s breathing grows shallower, and they know that their window to save her is closing.

She screams as he pulls the wooden beam out, and blood flows freely from the injury. He packs and wraps as fast as he can, trying to remember everything he ever learned in combat.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers to her as her sobbing subsides. “It’s my fault.”

Once the bleeding has slowed, he lifts her, and her cheek presses against his bare chest as he runs for the Lifeboat. She’s barely conscious, but still present enough to fight him as he settles her in the chair and tries to do up her belt for her.

She allows Rufus to do it, and that stings like a slap in the face.

Somehow, the technology that went into building the Lifeboat has preserved it from damage, and they land back in the present day with Lucy bloodsoaked and unconscious, but ultimately alive.

Later, she thanks him for saving her life, but it is stiff and terse.

It’s only when he’s wide awake in his bunk that night that he realizes that in the minutes he had thought he might die, he hadn’t thought of Jessica at all.

* * *

_**iv.** _

It baffles him, really, how a cruel and calculating woman like Carol Preston could be responsible for bringing someone as inherently good as Lucy into the world.

They are in June of 1919, and they are back in France again. Germany has sent a delegation to sign the Treaty of Versailles, which will spell out the end of World War One.

It goes without saying that Rittenhouse’s interest in the events is not a good sign, and the silver canister of nerve gas in Carol’s hand, brought back from a hundred years in the future, makes it crystal clear.

Lucy gives chase first, following her mother to a small operations room adjoining the salon where the Germans are due to be in mere minutes. Wyatt and Rufus are only a few paces behind, but it’s enough; as Carol spins around to face her daughter with the canister in her left hand, Lucy slams and locks the door behind her.

“Lucy!” Wyatt demands through the small window. “What are you doing?”

She ignores him, fixing pleading eyes on the woman who raised her.

“Mom, this isn’t you. You don’t have to do this.”

Carol lifts a gas mask to her face, her thumb on the trigger, ominous red digits preparing to count down.

“You used to read to me,” Lucy begs. “Stories about women who changed the world. I could read them myself just fine, but I loved the way you told them, and added little-known facts almost as if you knew them personally.”

Wyatt hammers on the door again, everything inside him burning with rage at the desperation in Lucy’s tone.

“Rufus!” he snaps, over his shoulder.

“I’m trying,” Rufus answers, peering at the makeshift device in his hand fashioned out of half a radio, scrap metal, and a battery from the Lifeboat. “I’m not exactly working with the best tools here.”

“When I was eleven,” Lucy continues, “I was jealous that everyone always paid so much more attention to Amy, because she was beautiful, and cheerful, and everything I wasn’t. You knew I was upset, so you flew us across the country to go to the National Museum of American History in DC, just you and me, our special trip.”

“Amy is inconsequential,” Carol snaps coldly. “Your refusal to forget her will prove your undoing.”

Lucy flinches as if her mother had struck her across the face, and Wyatt steps back, throwing his whole weight against the steel in a fruitless attempt to break it down.

“Lucy, open this door right now!”

She glances back for a heartbeat, and Wyatt sees Carol trigger the bioweapon’s timer in the background. An inhuman noise - of warning, horror, rage - tears its way out of his chest, and he barely registers Carol leaving through a door on the opposite side of the room as the canister falls to the ground with a sickening clatter.

“Wyatt!” Lucy cries, pressing her hands against the glass window. “You have to go.”

“I can’t,” he protests, brokenly. _I can’t leave you._

There’s a crow of triumph behind him.

“You won’t have to,” Rufus grins. “I disarmed it. _Just_.” He waves the device he’d MacGyvered as explanation, and Lucy’s eyes widen before she walks gingerly over to check.

“You did it,” she says, her voice shaking.

“Open the door,” Wyatt begs again and, finally, she complies. Rufus heads straight for the bioweapon, beginning to dismantle it entirely.

Lucy turns away, hugging her arms around herself as her shoulders shake. Wyatt is half-reaching for her before he remembers, instead letting his arms fall to his sides.

“You okay?” he murmurs.

“Let’s just get out of here,” she answers flatly.

* * *

The trip back to the present day is tense and silent, which has proven to be the standard ever since Jessica waltzed back into their lives. Lucy requests a private word with Agent Christopher, but they are gone only a couple of minutes before Wyatt and Rufus get called into their debrief, with Lucy nowhere to be seen.

Wyatt searches for her afterwards, but she’s not in her quarters, or the kitchen area, and Jiya confirms she isn’t in the bathroom, either.

Moments away from panic, he checks the small storage room which they have converted into a makeshift closet with a couple of racks for their period-compliant clothes. It’s dark, but he can just see her sitting in a corner with her arms around her knees.

“Can I come in?”

She says nothing, which he takes to mean she doesn’t object to his presence, so he quietly lets himself in and closes the door behind him.

“So are we going to talk about how you locked yourself in a room with a weapon that was almost definitely going to kill you?”

“Wyatt, don’t,” she says, hoarsely.

“Talk to me,” he pleads, sitting beside her, and he feels the weight of the unsaid words hanging over them. _Talk to me like you used to before I screwed everything up._

“I didn’t think she’d actually do it.”

“Bullshit,” Wyatt scowls. “You locked me out.”

She wipes angrily at the tears streaming down her cheeks, but remains silent.

“I know that a lot has changed since Hollywood,” he says, pretending not to notice her sharp intake of breath, “but your safety is important to me. You and Rufus are my team and I don’t want to do this without you.” _I need you,_ he thinks, bitterly remembering a time when she had said those words to him, long before he had ever hurt her.

“My mother tried to kill me today,” she sighs, “and she was far from a perfect parent, but all I can think about are the good times. Is that crazy?”

“Of course not,” Wyatt answers. “You’re just human.”

He gets to his feet, and after a moment, Lucy stands up, too. It seems unintentional on her part, but she meets his gaze for what feels like the first time in weeks, her eyes glowing amber in the soft light of the storeroom. It’s magnetic, and neither of them can look away.

“Promise me that you’ll never put yourself in a situation like that ever again,” he says, his voice coming out lower than he’d intended.

There’s a long, weighted moment as she stares at him.

“I promise,” she concedes finally.

“I’m a good soldier,” he continues, even more quietly. “There was a time that completing the mission was all that mattered to me. I want you to know, though, that if it ever comes down to stopping Rittenhouse, or saving you, I’ll choose you every time.”

Lucy inhales, her eyelids fluttering shut against more tears, and before he knows it he is stepping closer to her, his hand on her cheek. She tenses, but he slides his palm to the back of her neck, bringing her forehead to rest against his own. Her shuddering breaths slow, starting to even out.

The door swings open and Jiya freezes in the entryway, her arms full of gear from their mission. Wyatt and Lucy spring apart, the latter mumbling something unintelligible and bolting from the room.

“Uh, sorry?” Jiya offers uncomfortably. “I was just putting some stuff away for Rufus.”

“You weren’t interrupting anything.” Wyatt’s words come out a little more curt than he’d intended, and Jiya raises an eyebrow.

“Right,” she says, stretching out the word.

It’s four in the morning, they’ve just returned from an exhausting mission, but Wyatt pushes past Jiya and heads for the workout room anyway.

He really, _really_ needs to hit something.

* * *

_**v.** _

Infiltrating a party in 1979 seems straightforward enough, at least until they spot a young woman with curly blonde hair and a dazzling smile among the guests.

Lucy grabs onto Rufus’ arm like a lifeline, steering him into a corner while Wyatt trails behind.

“That’s my mother,” she hisses.

“We knew that was a possibility going into this,” Rufus points out.

Lucy presses her lips together, her eyes darting nervously over to where her mother is chatting to a small group of people.

“Look,” Wyatt tells her softly. “She isn’t going to remember you, and we don’t have to stay long. We just need to get the list Ethan wrote about and get out of here.”

At the mention of her grandfather, Lucy glances around. “He’s probably here, too, with my dad. We should stay out of their way. We don’t need Ethan to recognize us four decades too early; it could draw the wrong kind of attention.”

“Focus,” Wyatt instructs, and she looks at him. “We’ll go to the east wing of the house and look there. Rufus, you check the west. We’re looking for the library; the file should be in one of the desk drawers.”

Rufus nods, patting Lucy’s shoulder twice before he disappears into the crowd. Lucy steels herself and follows Wyatt down the hallway behind them.

The distance between them is greater than it had been before, something that Wyatt hadn’t thought possible. It digs at him, consumes him in waking moments and at night as he struggles to sleep without the nightmare of Lucy dying in Versailles thinking she had nobody left to live for.

It had taken Jessica two days to notice as he had sullenly poked at his beef bourguignon - a French dish, of course, because the universe hadn’t tortured him enough - and as he had refused to tell her what was bothering him, the evening had ended with a fight, and him storming out to return to the bunker for another sleepless night.

He’d ended things with Jessica the next day, confessing that he’d changed in their time apart, a diplomatically-phrased truth. She hadn’t seemed surprised, or upset, merely handing back his rings and leaving in silence. He’d immediately felt lighter.

Nothing ever stays secret in the bunker, so he suspects that Lucy knows. She still doesn’t speak to him unless the mission calls for it, and skirts around him with an unusual amount of grace for someone he knows to be so clumsy.

During their search, they find a bathroom, a storage closet, a drawing room, and a door to the courtyard, but no library. As they turn to go back to the ballroom, however, they hear jovial laughter.

“Someone’s coming!” Lucy exclaims.

Wyatt doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even give her a chance to panic. He spins her, pressing her back up against the wall as she lets out a squeak of shock.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

Then he captures her lips with his.

She stiffens, her hands fall on his chest and he thinks she’s going to push him away until she finally melts, sliding her palms up to his shoulders and into his hair. Where their first kiss had been dizzying, throwing him off balance, and their night together in 1941 had been full of curiosity, hope, and promises, this is entirely different. His flesh feels like it’s burning, and her nails scratch his scalp, and it’s both too much to bear and not enough as he presses her harder against the wall and she gasps his name.

“Oh, my!” a scandalized voice rings through the haze. Carol Preston is flanked by several men in suits, at least two of whom are trying to mask their leers behind their glasses of scotch.

Lucy giggles into his neck before pulling away, and Wyatt suppresses a flinch at the sound. “I’m truly sorry. My husband has had far too much wine, and we... forgot ourselves.”

Carol smiles politely, but still looks rather red in the cheeks. Lucy smoothes her hands over her clothing with an apologetic smile, but Wyatt doesn’t miss her flushed face and the shine of unshed tears that belies her anger.

“We should rejoin the party, darling,” he murmurs, pointedly.

“Only if you stick to water for the rest of the night,” Lucy responds, laughing lightly and using her thumb to wipe the lipstick stain from his mouth.

They excuse themselves as quickly as they can, and once out of sight, Lucy drops his hand.

“I’m sorry,” Wyatt says softly, but she rounds on him with fury in her eyes.

“No, Wyatt, you do not get to do this right now,” she hisses.

He wonders if this is the moment that breaks them - one last stupid, reckless move in a long line of bad decisions. It seems like a lifetime ago that he prided himself on being someone to take the hurt from her heart, yet here he is now, the ass who put it there.

He wonders if he’s lost his last chance to salvage what’s left of their friendship.

“I’ve got it,” Rufus exclaims, appearing in front of them and startling both Wyatt and Lucy from their thoughts. "And… you guys look like you’re, well, not in the mood for a party.”

“That’s an understatement,” Wyatt murmurs. “We should go.”

A storm of self-loathing continues to gather in his chest, threatening to consume him, and when the Lifeboat lands in 2018, she flees for any place where he isn’t.

Jiya throws him a furious glare before chasing after Lucy, and even Rufus grips his shoulder with a bit more venom than Wyatt is used to, then walks away in angry silence.

He sits at the bottom of the stairs with his head in his hands, dwarfed in the shadow of the giant sphere of scrap metal behind him, feeling more alone than ever.

* * *

_**+1.** _

He’s surprised she takes his call, given how they’d left things.

The diner smells a little strange, and the eerie stillness of the air outside takes his breath away, but he’s relieved when he spots the head of blonde hair bent over a coffee at a booth in the corner.

“Thanks for meeting me,” he says, tentatively. “I know it’s late, but I just got back from… a mission.”

Jessica takes a deep breath. “I’m only here on the condition that you won’t lie to me.”

Wyatt nods. “So you’ll know it’s the truth when I say that I wish I could tell you everything about the work we do.”

“We?” she questions, almost like she’s been waiting for him to slip.

“Lucy,” he says, trying to suppress the electric shock that runs through him when her name crosses his lips, “and Rufus. Our work is important, but it’s changed us.”

“Again with the _us_ , Wyatt.”

“You and me were apart,” he says, deciding to spit it out before he can change his mind. “Something happened with Lucy. I tried to walk away from it, but all I ended up doing was hurting the two people I love most.”

Her eyes are softer than he expected. “I only ever met her the once, at that party for your friend’s birthday. She was about to walk into a barstool, and you steered her out of the way without a break in conversation. You had this preternatural awareness of where she was and what she needed. It stuck with me.”

He watches her take a sip of her coffee. “I love you, Jess, and I always will. All I want is for you to be happy, but I don’t think I can be that for you anymore.”

Another weight is lifted from his shoulders, and the spell is broken as the world breathes again. The wind outside the diner begins to pick up a little, and the clatter of cutlery on plates from a nearby table punctuates the nighttime quiet.

“We both know our marriage should have been over a long time ago,” Jessica admits. “We’re a long way from the two starry-eyed kids we were.”

Wyatt regards her, a shadow of the awe he felt the first time he’d seen her in this timeline still persisting at the back of his mind. He’d spent years wallowing in guilt, wishing he could get her back and do things over again. Memories gilded by heartache had driven him to desperation.

Some twist of fate, or luck, or just plain Rittenhouse manipulation had given him a gift - not a chance at love, but a chance at forgiveness and being forgiven, a chance at closure.

“I hope you’ll stay in touch,” he says, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand. “I’d like to hear you’re okay from time to time.”

“You, too,” she says with a sad smile. “Get home safe, okay?”

He nods, motioning to stop her as she makes to throw some cash on the table for her coffee and opening his own wallet instead. “I got it.”

They stand, awkwardly facing each other, until he reaches out for a hug and wraps her in his arms. Her death had torn a wound through his soul, one he hadn’t thought could be healed, a grim reminder of his guilt that he had to carry with him.

As she walks away from him into the night, he feels the final stitches pull it closed for good.

* * *

He isn’t fool enough to think that the mess he created can be fixed in a day.

Lucy has been betrayed too many times, and her trust is not readily given. He had had it, once, until he’d plunged the knife in when he’d run out on her and then twisted it again and again while he tried to figure out what he wanted.

He doesn’t deserve her forgiveness; he knows that.

It won’t stop him from trying.

He begins with the smallest things he can, knowing that if he pushes too hard, she’ll only push right back. He ensures the coffee machine is ready and hot by the time she’s out of bed each morning, or quietly cleans the kitchen in the middle of the night when she complains about how filthy the counters are. Recalling a story she’d told about sharing a croque-monsieur with Amy in Strasbourg as teenagers, he makes the toasted sandwiches for lunch when it’s his turn and revels in the way her eyes light up when he places her plate in front of her.

When she expresses a newfound dislike of checkers, something he knows he can trace to the last time they had played just moments before everything fell apart, he asks Denise to bring more games. Lucy’s competitive streak returns with vigor in a fiery round of Historical Jenga, a mutant of her own creation involving answering a question correctly or being forced to draw another block.

It’s the moment Lucy is bent over her pot plant in the corner of the makeshift lounge room, frowning quizzically, when he realizes he’s about to get caught.

“The dirt is wet,” she remarks, when Jiya asks what she’s doing. “Who’s been watering my plant?”

Rufus, Jiya, Mason, and Denise all look in unison at Wyatt, who is staring determinedly at the newspaper he’s pretending to read.

“I should be more specific,” Lucy says. “Who has been watering my _fake_ plant?”

The blush on his cheeks gives him away, if the amusement of the others doesn’t do it for him, but Lucy just watches him for a moment before shrugging and returning to her book.

The next jump, muscle memory takes over, and Wyatt leans forward from his seat subconsciously before he remembers why he had lost the right to fix her belt. Resignedly, he sits back, glaring down at his hands.

When he looks up, he sees her staring at him, a ghost of a smile on her face. She doesn’t break eye contact, and he slowly leans across, reaching around her carefully to fasten the straps over her shoulders. He somehow avoids touching her, despite the crackle of static he feels from his face being so close to hers.

She corners him in his room after they return, her fresh cuts and bruises from the mission doing nothing to dampen the fire in her eyes as she stands silhouetted in his doorway.

“I don’t want to be your consolation prize.”

Wyatt sits up, slowly. “You’re not.”

“I thought I was strong enough,” she admits, closing the door behind her and leaning against it. “I thought I could watch you go back to her without it killing me. I’ve lost so many people I’ve loved,” she trips a little over her words, like she hadn’t meant to say them, “I asked myself how much one more could hurt.”

“Lucy.” One word; her name is an apology, a plea, a prayer.

“If she was your bolt of lightning, you deserved to be happy with her. But you were _mine_ , Wyatt, and maybe I deserve to be happy, too.”

She hugs her arms around herself defensively, and he’s speechless, too many of his thoughts trying to make themselves known, unable to form a coherent sentence. He reaches for her instead, pulling her into his lap as he presses his lips to the cut above her eye, the bruise on her wrist. He threads his fingers through hers, using his other hand to brush away the tears that creep out from beneath her long, dark eyelashes.

“I love you,” she whispers, and he takes a sharp, involuntary breath at her words. “Completely and irrevocably.”

A warmth spreads through him, despite the perpetual chill of the bunker, and he kisses her, feather-light. “I love you, too. I’m sorry I ever made you doubt that.”

She tenses, as if she’s waiting for the sucker punch. “And Jessica?”

“Jessica and I agreed that we are different people now, and we’ll be much better off apart,” he assures her. “Falling in love with you changed me. I can’t take that back, and I would never want to.”

She watches him, checking for any sign of uncertainty, any hint of a half-truth. He runs his hands over her skin, up her arms, tracing her face, winding through her hair, relishing that he can touch her again, mapping every inch of her and committing it to memory.

“I’ve missed being able to hold you like this,” he confesses.

Lucy smiles, cradling his jaw in her palms, rubbing her thumbs over his cheekbones, and murmurs, “Me, too.”

When she kisses him, it’s like the ground is pulled from beneath him and the breath is torn from his lungs.

Maybe he can learn to like falling after all.


End file.
